Ever taken an Intel Atom CPU apart?

[Madsaaby]

Hey Guys

I had a dead motherboard laying around which I was about to throw away.
So I thought it would be interesting to take a look inside the CPU itself.

I heated the puppy up with a hot-air gun, and lifted the CPU of the MB. And carefully broke of the fanout board from the core itself while applying heat with a blowtorch.

I ground the CPU on 1800c sandpaper with a glass plate underneath for a short time, to get a nice surface as of pic 1.

I discovered that the copper interconnect layers, and dye itself was so ridiculously thin that it was impossible to control the grinding this way (pic 2 and 3).

So I took a tiny peace of sandpaper, and bend it to get a sharp point which I could use to grind down more where it needed to. I finally, at the very last layer, managed to get (almost) the whole dye visible.

It looks very fascinating if you haven't seen the guts of a CPU before.

(The pictures are not the best, but bear with me, it's not easy to focus on such a thing, while getting the right angle of both (a very bright!) light, and camera at the same time WHILE KEEPING THE CORRECT TONGUE ANGLE !)

Hope someone find this interesting, at least I had fun with it

- Mads

[ablacon64]

It's amazing! Thanks for the post!

[SeanB]

I must photograph the IBM core I have decapped then.........

[amyk]

The different colours you see are due to diffraction effects; at 45nm feature sizes, many times smaller than the wavelength of light, even a light microscope won't let you see the individual transistors and interconnects.

[T4P]

Guess you'll need one of these 

[codeboy2k]

Guess you'll need one of these 

My wife wants one of those. 

I told her I'll build her one, I have started drawing up plans using sections of flanged drain
pipe that I plan to weld together. I'm planning it so it can be torn down, maintained etc.. in
manageable sections.  I hope to use a gun from an old black and white TV or O'scope, don't
know which is best yet.  I have know idea what to expect from it, I'm still planning and researching.

I do hope to make one for less than a $million lol...

[Madsaaby]

Guess you'll need one of these 

Heh, is that an Electron Microscope ? :O

[krenzo]

If you want to see more high resolution images of the insides of chips, look here.

[T4P]

Heh, is that an Electron Microscope ? :O

It is 

My wife wants one of those. 

I told her I'll build her one, I have started drawing up plans using sections of flanged drain
pipe that I plan to weld together. I'm planning it so it can be torn down, maintained etc.. in
manageable sections.  I hope to use a gun from an old black and white TV or O'scope, don't
know which is best yet.  I have know idea what to expect from it, I'm still planning and researching.

I do hope to make one for less than a $million lol...

Very expensive these things 

[SeanB]

Best guns are not from a CRT, but a car headlamp that you break open. You need a very robust heater, preferably a short one that you can run at 5A or so.

[amyk]

Guess you'll need one of these 

My wife wants one of those. 

I told her I'll build her one, I have started drawing up plans using sections of flanged drain
pipe that I plan to weld together. I'm planning it so it can be torn down, maintained etc.. in
manageable sections.  I hope to use a gun from an old black and white TV or O'scope, don't
know which is best yet.  I have know idea what to expect from it, I'm still planning and researching.

I do hope to make one for less than a $million lol...

Someone has actually made a SEM for quite a bit less than that:
http://benkrasnow.blogspot.ca/2011/03/diy-scanning-electron-microscope_26.html

...although its resolution isn't high enough to be used for chip photography.

[Madsaaby]

Heh, is that an Electron Microscope ? :O

It is 

Now that's not fair     

Hehe, I don't think I should even think about the price of such a thing..

[Madsaaby]

I must photograph the IBM core I have decapped then.........

Yea, you should Post a link here if you do, could be interesting to see..

[Zad]

Heh, is that an Electron Microscope ? :O

It is 

Now that's not fair     

Hehe, I don't think I should even think about the price of such a thing..

I believe Jeri Ellsworth has an electron microscope. Still in boxes, but she does have one.

[T4P]

Now that's not fair     

Hehe, I don't think I should even think about the price of such a thing..

Too expensive for me... just googled that picture 

I believe Jeri Ellsworth has an electron microscope. Still in boxes, but she does have one.

She's a great engineer in most aspects, even knows to bake her own transistors!
I'm not surprised though that she has one

[arekm]

Take a look in here:

how to "open" IC
http://leon-instruments.blogspot.com/2012/07/jak-otworzyc-uklad-scalony.html

opened ICs:

http://leon-instruments.blogspot.com/2012/04/kolekcja-struktury-ukadow-scalonych-z.html
http://leon-instruments.blogspot.com/2012/04/kolekcja-struktury-scalone.html
http://leon-instruments.blogspot.com/2012/04/kolekcja-nowoczesne-struktury-scalone.html
http://leon-instruments.blogspot.com/2012/07/kolekcja-prototypy-procesorow.html

Unfortunately in Polish (so use http://google.com/translate if you want to read) but look at photos - these will explain how to get such nice structures (with fire).

[Wim_L]

Guess you'll need one of these 

Except that it looks like a transmission electron microscope, and you'd usually want a scanning electron microscope (working using backscatter and/or secondary emission) for looking at chips. Unless you can prepare extremely thin sections of those chips, that is.

[T4P]

It's just an rough image, not intended to be 100% accurate